The present invention relates to lawn mowers and more particularly to a safety device adapted to prevent rolling of the mower in an emergency situation.
Safety devices have been provided prior to the present invention for controlling power lawn mowers in emergency situations. As is well known, there are occasions when serious physical injury has been inflicted upon the operator of the lawn mower due to his accidental slipping or stumbling. However, such prior safety devices have generally been designed to cut off the power to the cutting blade and have been rather complex and expensive. U.S. Pat. No. 3,111,800 issued Nov. 26, 1963, for example, discloses a safety device requiring an electrical system including a sensing antenna and a relay and blade-arresting arm arrangement. Although such safety devices are effective they are frequently too expensive to achieve widespread acceptance and are applicable only to power mowers. Further, such devices do not always prevent continued rolling of the mower which frequently leads to aggravation of the injury already sustained. There is, therefore, still an unsatisfied need for a simple safety device which is useful with both power mowers and with manually operated lawn mowers.